John Saunders reports: Round one of the 2017 Chess.com Isle of Man Masters took place on Saturday 23 September 2017 at the Villa Marina in Douglas. And the star of the show was not one of the players so much as the implementation of the controversial random pairings experiment. You've heard of Brexit? Well, since I'm British and the tournament is held in Britain I'm calling the random pairing system Brandom...

Yesterday (Friday) was the day before the tournament starts, and turned out to be quite a lot of fun as the business of registration and pairings took place. This process can often be very boring, but not today.

On Thursday 21 September, as a warm-up event before the start of the Chess.com Isle of Man Masters, there was a simul given by top rated woman player Hou Yifan of China against 15 players in the Villa Marina in Douglas.

This is my first postcard from sunny Douglas, Isle of Man. There are less than 48 hours to go as I write this, and it still seems like a dream that we're going to see the likes of Magnus Carlsen, Vishy Anand, Vlad Kramnik, Fabiano Caruana, Hikaru Nakamura and many more famous chess players square up against each other at the Villa Marina on Saturday afternoon.

More than three months before the event begins, the online entry facility for the Masters is now closed. We have 170 players entered, with four other places reserved, including two qualifying spots for Chess.com’s Titled Tuesday to be held on 6 June.

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John Saunders reports: the 2018 Chess.com Isle of Man International was won by Radoslaw Wojtaszek of Poland after a play-off match with Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan. The two players led going into the last round and drew their ninth round game to finish on 7/9 while none of the four players on 6/8 managed to win in order to tie with them. They each take home a cheque for £37,500 with Wojtaszek also receiving a further £500 for winning the blitz play-off. The initial two-game blitz was tied on 1-1 but Wojtaszek chose White in the Armageddon game and duly won. Seven players finished on 6½: Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk (both Russia), Hikaru Nakamura, Jeffery Xiong (both USA), Wang Hao (China), Gawain Jones (England) and Baskaran Adhiban (India).

John Saunders reports: another pulsating day’s chess saw four 2700+ rated players bite the dust, all bar one beaten by players less highly rated than themselves, and in one case more than 200 points adrift. Two leaders emerge from the smoke of battle, Arkadij Naiditsch (Azerbaijan) and Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Poland), who now both have 6½/8, while four more players are half a point behind them and are still in with a chance of a share in the top prize – Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Wang Hao (China), Gawain Jones (England) and Jeffery Xiong (USA).

John Saunders reports: another remarkable round at the Villa Marina saw the number of leaders increase by one – the same names as per the round six leader board, plus England’s perennial numero uno, Mickey Adams. There was some fantastic chess played, which it gives me great pleasure to report upon. Before we move on, let’s just record the seven leaders’ names for the record: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France), Hikaru Nakamura (USA), Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Poland), Wang Hao (China), Arkadij Naiditsch (Azerbaijan), Mickey Adams (England) and Jeffery Xiong (USA) all have 5½ out of 7.